Revising My Action Research Plan

The conference with my site supervisor was extremely insightful and interesting. Mr. Silverman and I sat down for about 45 minutes to discuss my action research plan, therefore I had the opportunity to share my ideas and get some great feedback.

After discussing the questions and the activities on my action research plan, we came to the conclusion that it would be best to eliminate student motivation and focus on teacher development. This was due to the fact that whatever data being collected must be measurable. Mr. Silverman and I agreed that it would be far too challenging at this point to measure student motivation. Never the less, we concluded that focusing on specific writing goals would be measurable. Another revision made was to minimize the grade levels participating in the action research. We agreed that the grade levels with the greatest weakness are 2^nd and 3^rd grade. So we determined that I would collect writing samples at the end of this school year from those grades only. These writing samples will be analyzed for syntax grade level, sentence length, average of transitions per sentence, and students’ capability to write using paragraphs. I will be entering these writing samples into the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Score on MS Word. By doing so, I will I will find the level of readability of each writing sample. Readability statistics are good predictors of the level of difficulty of documents, especially technical ones.

Mr. Silverman and I feel that these skills are the most challenging for teachers and students. If students are able to improve in these areas, they are most likely using stronger conventions and applying literacy skills to their writing. What we have planned is that I will collect these samples from 4 particular teachers in May of this school year. The following school year, the same teachers will provide writing samples in May again, but from their current students. This allows the teacher to apply knowledge acquired through the mentor program and book studies. If the teacher has grown professionally, it should be evident when data is collected and compared to the previous year. The groups of students must meet similar criteria though. We concluded that the activities that would be most appropriate for this study are the following: Implementing a mentor program among 2 bilingual teachers and 2 monolingual teachers, and organizing on going book studies that provide teachers with opportunities to develop professional competence. Both the mentor program and book studies will show teachers how to use mentor texts to teach writing.  That being said, I have revised my action plan question.

My new research question is:

If 2^nd and 3^rd grade teachers are provided with a writing mentor program and participate in ongoing book studies, will their students’ sentence length, syntax grade level, use of transitions and ability to write in paragraphs increase by a measurable amount?

Assessments and accountability was another topic discussed during our meeting. Mr. Silverman is allowing me to create six-week assessments for teachers who are participating in the mentor program to use during the upcoming school year. The purpose of these assessments is to monitor both teacher and student progress and to keep teachers accountable throughout the year. Too often, we hear that teachers “don’t have time” for writing because they are busy preparing kid for state exams. Other times, teachers say they integrate writing throughout content areas, yet they don’t do it effectively.

In addition, my principal and I talked about how we will select teachers being asked to participate. We want to make sure that teachers asked to participate are not only in agreement, but feel the necessity for the mentorship program. It is also imperative that these teachers are not currently using teaching strategies such as the ones discussed by the author, Ralph Fletcher. We feel that the study would be most effective if participating teachers were enthusiastic and eager to grow professionally.  One of my fears in conducting this research study was that my principal would not allow me to monitor other teachers, but he permitted me to observe teachers by conducting walkthroughs before and after the mentoring program is initiated.

After having this conference with my supervisor, I feel much more confident and ready to begin my action research. The meeting not only provided me with guidance, but also made me foresee this action research study much more clearly.